Diablo 3

[mothwing]

I liked hearing about the third instalment, even though I doubt I'll ever play it. Diablo I was the among the first games I ever played, Diablo II was the first game I ever played online and together with my brother. I loved that game, even though the amount of monsters you have to kill to get through the game and the way in which they completely vanish once killed always bothered me somewhat. I loved the story, though, and the prettiness of the angels in the game.


Sparkly, shiny, tendril wings. What more can you ask for?

What does make me a little sceptical are the graphics. What I've seen of the game so far is not that impressive. Well, Blizzard have never been synonymous with pretty graphics, and it seems as though the graphics have barely changed from Diablo II - which will make the fans happy, I suppose, but I would have liked something ... more impressive. I am not much of a gamer nerd, but considering HOW much prettier HGL and D&DO are, prettier games seem to be possible. I am told that the game is good for a beta version and considering it's in third person perspective, and maybe that's true. Still.

Comments

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Wow, I had not realised I had not responded to this yet. Sorry.

Your motivation for playing that game sounds a lot like mine, although in my case a large part of the motivation is probably being able to play with my brother again.
As a solo-gamer, I never got the hang of guilds or parties. (My only guild experience was when I chanced upon an RPGing guild who invited me. They managed to suck even more than the majority of forum RPGers out there, which is a record.) So far, I've only ever done instances with random groups, and even though some of those were really nice and interesting, they usually did wind up sucking one way or another. That was more due to my class than the group, though ("Yes, I know you are a Shadow Priest, but why are you so bad at healing?!").
I was disappointed by the utter lack of imagination about the quests, too. There are some really interesting ones with actual storyline, but most of them are variations of "Kill ten wolves." - "Done? Good, go kill twenty slightly stronger wolves!".

WoW is mostly about the instances and raids, as that's where their imagination went (which doesn't say that most instances are that interesting, but sometimes you just catch a glimpse of someone with a mind for storytelling among all the rubble). For me, the greatest difficulty has been to find people who are also new players and not replaying the game out of boredom with their thousands alt and are therefore more likely to permit mistakes without flaring up, and players who actually enjoy exploring the areas instead of marching straight to the final boss as though trying to run a race. I would have liked to actually explore the places we rushed through a little, too. There are amazingly pretty instances which are funny and have great NPC dialogue, or events which are worth playing, like the Opera event.

I have only started playing WoW a while ago, post-BC, so I am not sure what to think about it. Coming from WCIII: FT, story-wise, the introduction of Draenei and BElfs is incredibly lame and not very logical, but all that was forgotten for me when I saw Outland. Those landscapes were somewhat worth the amount of grind before. It's by far the prettiest area and I enjoy riding around Terokkar Forest (http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1080/645675976_f64a3d2e33.jpg?v=0), for instance, or the Zangamarsh (http://farm1.static.flickr.com/187/394327263_4041d99327.jpg?v=0). I am a sucker for exotic landscapes.

I tried GW and Crocky's playing it at the moment, but somehow, it didn't really work for me, and even though it's probably good that there are not so many mindless grind quests, I was baffled to see how few quests there are. There did not seem to be any more content once you're a few levels into the game, and little else to do.

What's LotRO like? I know that Night loves it, but I never played a demo for that one.

The next MMO on my list I'd like to give a shot is Silkroad, which is appealing mostly because it is free of charge. I've never heard anything positive about it so far, but maybe it's better than people say.

Thanks for the recommendations! So far, I've not been able to find any of the games you mentioned in my brother's game shelf which is much better stacked than mine, so I've put Baldur's Gate on hold at the library and am currently waiting for that one. I think I'll skip Knights of the Old Republic, because even though I do have Star Wars tolerance, I don't think I'd enjoy a game in that setting. I am very curious about Jade Empire, too.